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Nuggets don't want no satisfaction

Denver coach wants 7-6 team to stay hungry

By Adrian Dater The Denver Post

Posted:
11/24/2012 10:55:51 PM MST

Updated:
11/24/2012 10:56:39 PM MST

DENVER -- You can tell after a regular-season victory whether a team is ready to really start winning. Ask coaches who have been around awhile, and invariably they subscribe to the "Act like you've been there before" philosophy.

Mediocre teams say things like this after regular-season wins: "Hopefully, we can build on this." Or, "This was huge." Or something else along those lines.

The Nuggets are trying to break free from the cliche of the easily satisfied team. It started before the season, when general manager Masai Ujiri stopped some softball media questioning before it could begin in earnest. Sure, the Nuggets looked pretty good on paper. Sure, they had a nice little run late last season and took the Lakers to seven games in the first round. Sure, there was something to build on.

"We haven't done a thing," Ujiri said.

Nuggets coach George Karl is trying to stamp Ujiri's words into the impressionable minds of his relatively young team. But it's a delicate balance, trying to be the realist and the optimist. Karl wants his players to be encouraged by short-term success but knows he has to keep pushing and pushing for them to want the next level.

After the first 13 games, with Denver owning a 7-6 record, Karl said his sales job remains a work in progress.

"They have to realize it's their job," Karl said. "It's their job to get in the weight room. It's their job to try to get better every day."

Karl wasn't thrilled with his players' demeanor during their shoot-around Friday morning.

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The Nuggets entered the day having won two in a row, both on the road, and he sensed too much self-satisfaction about it. When the Nuggets came into their locker room down by six points at halftime against the Golden State Warriors later that night, Karl let them have it.

"It was ugly in here," guard Ty Lawson said. "There was some yelling and screaming at us."

There seemed to be little self-satisfaction after the Nuggets' 102-91 win over the Warriors. Lawson and Andre Iguodala mostly talked about the things that went wrong in the first half, and how they needed to be corrected.

For a team hoping to act like it has been there before, it is something to build on.

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